Balance of a Song
by Starlight Sprite
Summary: "What unites people? Stories. There's nothing more powerful in the world than a good story. And what does every good story need? A villain." A darker fantasy alternate ending to Game of Thrones, featuring the rebirth of an ancient power in Westeros. Diverges after episode 8.5. (Keeping this rated T but Ch. 3 is probably on the strong side.)
1. Sansa

The courtyard of Winterfell was silent. Sansa stood on the balcony walkway, staring down at Bran as he sat lost in a trance, a thousand miles away. Ever since he had told of the horrors in King's Landing she had stood there with bated breath, desperate for any news.

She had never trusted Daenerys Targaryen, not from the moment she had first met her. There was a person too in love with her own power, Sansa had thought. She'd seen it all before. Jon, equally in love with the dragon queen, hadn't listened to her misgivings. And now he was in the capital as Daenerys razed it to the ground. Arya was there too, Sansa suspected, as she had disappeared shortly after Jon. She could only hope they weren't caught in the crosshairs of Daenerys's show of force. Sansa hadn't wanted to be right. Not if it meant this.

She fiddled with the obsidian blade Arya had given her before the battle of Winterfell. She had kept it in a pocket in the folds of her skirt, an unpleasant reminder of how useless she had been when it really mattered. "Stick them with the pointy end," Arya had said, but she hadn't even done that. When the time had come, she had frozen, and probably wouldn't even have found the courage to escape with her life had Tyrion not been beside her. Even with all she had been through, she had never felt as helpless as she had down in those crypts.

She felt that way now, watching her brother, his eyes weirdly glazed over, his face unreadable. She wondered for the hundredth time what was going on, what he could see.

Bran blinked. It was the tiniest of movements but she was down the stairs and across the courtyard in time to see his eyes return to their usual brown.

"What's happening?" she demanded.

It was a moment before he answered. "The city is falling."

Her breath caught. "Jon? Arya?"

"They're alive. For now. Daenerys's soldiers are fighting Jon's."

This was a surprise. "Fighting each other?"

"Yes."

"This shouldn't be happening. None of this should be happening." Sansa's words sounded desperate, even to her. "They need to stop."

His voice was distant. "They'll never stop. And neither will she. Daenerys."

"But they did stop," Sansa insisted. "Before. In the war against the dead. Everyone put aside their differences, even her. They can do so again."

"Yes." His voice was bemused, but suddenly he stared straight at her. "They can."


	2. Jon

Daenerys's voice echoed across the dais. Jon didn't know what she was saying, but it sounded imperial, commanding. From across the flagstones where he stood behind her, in the doorway, he could see her shoulders heaving as she shouted to her soldiers below. He didn't need to speak Dothraki to recognize the victory speech of a conqueror.

How could something be both so beautiful and so terrible?

His thoughts were interrupted by a movement at his side. He turned to see Arya, her face filthy and bloodstained, and for the first time in days he felt something other than numb.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I came to kill Cersei. But it seems she," Arya nodded toward Daenerys, "took care of that."

Daenerys continued to shout guttural words. One of them sounded like _Winterfell_.

"I know a killer when I see one," Arya said, her look indicating the understatement. She paused, and then blurted, "You know the North will be next, don't you? Daenerys won't let Sansa stand against her. Or anyone else for that matter."

Jon didn't know how to respond. "She's our queen."

"Yes." Arya's look was pointed. "But should she be?"

The crowd erupted into cheers as Daenerys's speech evidently concluded. Jon didn't have time to say anything before Tyrion Lannister walked past him, across the flagstones and to Daenerys's side.

There was a moment before she acknowledged his presence and turned to face him. They shared an exchange, too low for Jon to hear. All he saw was Tyrion clasping his Hand of the Queen pin and pulling it from his chest. There was a pregnant pause and then Tyrion flung it away from him down the steps.

When Daenerys spoke her voice was louder, measured and frigid. "And do I need to remind you how I deal with traitors?"

"Traitor?" Tyrion asked, with a bitter half-laugh. "If it is treason to care about the innocents of the realm, then yes, I suppose I am a traitor."

Daenerys paused. "Very well then," she said, her voice regal and resigned. She turned to where Drogon sat on the nearby tower, and as if on cue he flapped his wings and lifted off. He circled in the air above for a moment and then landed with a bone-shaking thud on the dais.

Tyrion drew back, but only slightly. His face set into an expressionless gaze that seemed to say a thousand things at once. Jon felt his breath catch as he looked at Daenerys, staring down at Tyrion. And then she spoke.

"Dracarys."


	3. Sansa (2)

**A/N: So this chapter was difficult to write (hence the delay in updating), but this is where it gets interesting! I might rework/repost this eventually so if you have any concrit please leave it in a review. I'm excited (and a little nervous?) to see what you guys think :)**

"Why are we here?"

They were in the godswood, Bran in his chair beside the heart tree and Sansa standing, fidgeting, a few feet away. The air was chilly but milder than it had been of late. The trees were dripping lazy drops into the slush below, and, overhead, the occasional cawing raven could be heard. Winter was still coming, Sansa noted, but lacking the biting preternatural cold that had come with the Walkers.

Bran didn't seem to have heard her. "This is where the Night King died."

An involuntary shiver ran up Sansa's spine, but she waited as he continued: "I was watching through the ravens during the battle. I circled overhead and saw all his army, and ours. I didn't understand it, not at first."

"Didn't understand what?"

"The dead should have won."

"What do you mean?"

"We were outnumbered. They had surrounded us on every side, and had killed many of our soldiers and added them to their own. His army could have overrun ours easily."

"But they didn't."

Bran didn't seem to notice the interruption. "And the Night King could have killed me. There was a moment, towards the end. Here. There was no one else of ours left alive - everyone defending me was dead."

Including Theon, Sansa thought. She remembered his body on one of the many pyres they had burned after the battle, the gash visible where the Night King had stabbed him through. She pushed the feelings that were threatening to well up away. "And then what?"

"He was walking towards me, slowly. And then he stopped," Bran paused, "and - smiled."

It was an unsettling image. Sansa shook her head. "But then he was killed."

"Yes," said Bran. "And that is the part I didn't understand."

Sansa didn't understand his confusion. "Maybe he thought he had time enough," she said. "Maybe he was cocky, wanted to gloat over his victory. He couldn't have known Arya would sneak up behind him."

"Maybe not. But it wasn't like that. He didn't have human feelings like that, not anymore. He had no reason to prove anything to me. And in that moment when Arya stabbed him, it didn't seem like he was defeated. It felt more like – a surrender."

"But you said he wanted to kill you. That you were the world's memories."

"That was what I thought. But maybe I was wrong. I believe now that he wanted - peace. At whatever cost. After all, what use is remembering if you don't use it for anything?"

Sansa wasn't sure what to make of any of this, or why they were even having this discussion when there were more pressing matters at hand. "What are you saying?" she asked.

Bran's words, when he spoke, were careful, deliberate. "We need to bring back the Night King."

The statement was so unexpected, so absurd, that she blinked at him for a moment before bursting into laughter. The sound was thin and high-pitched, even to her own ears. "What on – I - you can't possibly mean that."

He looked straight at her. "I do."

Her fit of giggling died as quickly as it had come, and she stared at him with rising concern. Sansa had often, since Bran's return from beyond the Wall, been confused by his new abilities, and sometimes had even been pained by his remoteness. But now, looking at him, she wondered if her brother had gone completely mad. "And why – how - would we possibly do that?"

"Me."

"You could bring him back?"

"No. You could."

None of this made any sense at all. She opened her mouth to protest but he cut her off.

"It's difficult to explain. But maybe I can show you." He held out his gloved hand. "May I?"

She hesitated, then, deciding it couldn't hurt to indulge him, took it. Their hands clasped between them, he reached out on his other side and touched the trunk of the tree.

She gasped as a myriad of images and noises entered her mind, swirling, moving, overwhelming in their scope and number and meaning. Her heart beat louder – or stopped beating? - as she was swept away in a stream of images and sounds and time, swirling and fading and echoing through her mind...

_Winterfell..._

Daenerys, beautiful and imperial, shouting victory to the masses of her soldiers...

_We will conquer them with fire and blood..._

A trio of unearthly siblings flying from the smoking mountain ruins of their home to rain fire upon the land to the west...

_Burn them all - _

A man with a crown on his silver hair, screaming the words as he clenched the arms of the iron throne...

_His is the song of ice and fire - _

A younger silver haired man, his forehead touching that of a dark-haired lady, his hands on the swell of her belly, humming a forgotten tune...

_Promise me, Ned - _

The lady, Lyanna, her face damp and pale, whispering her dying words to a young man recognizable as Eddard Stark, holding a baby with brown eyes - eyes that faded into the set face of Jon, standing still against the stony backdrop of a ravaged King's Landing...

_Every song must have its balance - _

Jon's face changing back to Lyanna's and then echoing into the faces of their fathers down the hallway in the crypts and then beyond into faces even more ancient, settling finally one pale, gaunt face – the face of a man leading a horde of other ancient men, all holding torches and swarming a low hill made of twisted tree branches, shouting as it caught ablaze...

_Man is our enemy. They will destroy nature and us if we do not stop them first...or create something to do so for us..._

A group of small, gray-skinned, treelike creatures standing around that leader of men, gagged and struggling, bound to a tree as one of them plunged a dragonglass blade into his heart and his eyes turned icy blue...

_Winter is coming…_

And she fell to her knees, once more Sansa of Winterfell, gasping in the cold air, seeing the breath, her breath, misting in front of her in slowing puffs as her mind gradually stopped reeling.

After a moment she managed, "He was a Stark."

"Or what became them," noted Bran. He looked amazingly calm, unruffled by their journey - used to such by now, she realized. She was realizing much about him now, it seemed.

She belatedly noticed the snow soaking into her dress and gloves so she stood up, unsteadily, and took a deep breath. "They - the Children of the Forest - made them. To stop men from destroying everything. And Daenerys is doing what drove them to it in the first place."

"Yes. The Night King was all that kept her at bay. As she and her dragons kept him. We cannot hope to defeat Daenerys. We can only – counterbalance her."

Sansa's mind was racing again. "Even if I could for a moment consider that, we don't have the magical spells those creatures had. How would we –"

"The Night King left all the magic necessary right here, where he touched me." Bran pulled up his sleeve and tapped the frostbitten scar above his wrist. "He wasn't trying to kill me during the battle. He was naming me as his heir." He looked at her, down to her hands. "You still have it?"

Sansa realized she was clutching, through the pocket in her skirt, the obsidian blade Arya had given her. The realization set in and she dropped it like it had burned her. "No," she said, horrified. "No, I won't."

"You must." He had already shrugged off his fur robe and was unlacing his leather doublet, leaving only his shirt over his chest.

Her words came out in a desperate rush. "But it didn't work. The Night King got out of control. How will this be any different?"

"As you have seen, as the Three-Eyed Raven, I have….perspective. That he did not have, and that even they did not have. I know what needs to be done."

She didn't know why – maybe it was everything she had seen and experienced through the tree. But somehow, suddenly, with a mysterious and icy clarity, she knew he was right.

She took the knife from her pocket, turned it over in her hands, noticing for the first time the smooth facets in its inky blue-black surface. Strange, how it could be so important. Almost as if in a dream she walked the few steps to Bran and stood over him, searching for some last confirmation. He nodded, solemnly, his eyes glassy with a faraway look as if steeling himself for what was about to happen. She held the blade with both hands, hovering over the area of exposed shirt, and took a deep breath.

And then she stabbed the tip into his chest. There was a horrifying crunch of bone and she recoiled. The blade was jutting out of his chest but it had only made it in an inch so in desperation she pushed on it, trying to drive it further.

"Sansa," he gasped, and just for a moment he looked at her with the wide brown eyes of the little boy she'd grown up with, and she froze, heart in throat.

"Bran," she sobbed, overcome with the realization of what was happening, her head dropping onto his shoulder. "Bran, I'm so sorry."

But Bran had always been the brave one, with magic and adventure in his heart. "No," he insisted, with difficulty. "You have - to do it. For everything."

She lifted her head to look at him with her tear-streaked face. "I can't lose you too."

"You - won't."

"But I am, right now."

His voice came out in a whisper. "Only if you forget."

And nearly blinded by tears, she continued to drive in the knife, nearly on top of him now, feeling his body turn cold and the air grow icy around her. The blood pooling from his chest froze, crystallizing where it spread. A tear fell from her face onto his chest and shattered, a diamond amidst so many rubies, as she plunged the blade the rest of the way into his heart.


	4. Jon (2)

Jon held his breath, expecting any second for Tyrion to get incinerated, but nothing happened. Drogon had reared up his head on Daenerys's command, but instead of spewing flame had merely shaken it back and forth jerkily a few times. A moment passed and Tyrion, who had been standing head bowed, eyes screwed shut, tentatively looked up. Drogon was still continuing the erratic movement, his eyelids closing almost as if in thought. Daenerys took a step forward, looking as confused as Jon felt. And then Drogon paused, blinked, and stared down at her and Jon's heart stopped.

His eyes were a brilliant, glowing blue.


	5. Tyrion

Several weeks had passed in a blur of confusion. In the mayhem following the incident on the dais Tyrion had been hastily locked in a cell, told gruffly that he would be dealt with later. Everything else he knew he had had to piece together from the whispering of his guards – the situation was enough to cause loose-lipped chatter among even the most seasoned of them, it seemed. If their rumors could be believed, Daenerys had locked herself in the Red Keep, refusing to admit any but Grey Worm. Drogon had flown off and settled, apparently willingly, in the dragonpit, where he had been in a fitful stupor, eyes sometimes blue, sometimes with their usual color, and sometimes glazed over with a milky white sheen. The maesters who had dared go near had reported that the dragon seemed still to be alive – "not that these Southron maesters would know anything about it," sneered one Stark guard to another.

_And neither did any of you, until a short time ago_, Tyrion thought. _Or any of the rest of us._ The terrors of the North were as good as uncharted territory to all of them. While quite glad not to be dead, he was chafing with the endless frustration of not being told what was going on. He had dreamt up a hundred explanations, most of them unsettling and none of them satisfactory. Execution would at least have been easier than the interminable agony of not knowing, he thought now, aimlessly kicking at the floor with his boot. How long had it been exactly? He had lost track.

There were footsteps outside the cell, maybe the changing of the guard. But this sounded a bit different, he thought, pricking up his ears. There were a few terse exchanges, and then the door abruptly opened and Jon walked in.

He looked maybe worse than Tyrion felt. He looked hunched over, defeated, older than his years. His hair was disheveled, as if he had entirely stopped caring what it looked like, and his clothing was askew. But it was his eyes that were really different, looking haunted out of the dark circles etched in his face.

Tyrion was on his feet in an instant. "What's happening?"

Jon looked like he could barely speak. He managed five words: "The Night King is back."

Tyrion's breath caught in his throat. This had been among his guesses – one he had hoped was wrong. "Where? How?"

This time Jon really seemed like he was about to break down. It was a moment before he spoke, and when he did it was a whisper. "Bran."

"What about him?" Tyrion pressed. "What did he see?"

Jon shook his head. "He's - gone."

"Gone?" Tyrion's stomach dropped. "The Night King killed him?"

"No, I - " Jon seemed like he was struggling with the words. "Bran's not – he _is _the Night King, now. Sansa - she used magic - to turn him."

This made no sense at all. Tyrion turned it over in his mind, trying to piece it together. "It has to be part of a plan," he said finally. "Sansa is playing a game with you, don't you understand? She knows Daenerys will continue conquering here unless she has something more important to fight. Sansa always was the cleverest of us all."

Jon shook his head wearily. "It's not a trick." He pulled a handful of paper scraps from his cloak and handed them to Tyrion.

They were messages, brought by ravens from Winterfell. Tyrion shuffled them around, comparing them. The hand was clearly recognizable as Sansa's, but lacking her usual precise flourishes, as if written hurriedly. He begin reading the letters, which told a strange tale, explaining the how and why of what Jon said had happened. The last one read:

"_I beg of you, do not share this with anyone in whom you do not have the utmost trust. I cannot tell anyone here of this or there would be chaos. Ser Brienne and Podrick are guarding the godswood, sworn to secrecy, and even they do not know all. But you must tell Daenerys. Tell her to lay down arms or there will be another Great War. Words cannot convey how much I wish it had not come to this, but believe me – and Bran – that this was the only way. Please, for the sake of everything, convince Daenerys to make peace."_

Tyrion stared for a second at her blotted signature, and then put down the letters, trying to let the enormity of this all sink in. He knew Sansa well enough to read deception between the lines, and here there was none. He had to conclude that she, and Bran, had indeed been driven to desperate actions.

"You spoke with Bran in Winterfell, before the battle," Jon said, looking at him searchingly. "Did he say anything about this?"

Tyrion shook his head, trying to recall. Their conversation by the fireside felt like ages ago. "He mostly talked of – legends. Of heroes, and villains, and the necessity of a central purpose. A story, drawing people together." In retrospect, he wondered how much of that had been the start of an idea in Bran's mind. Should he have questioned it? But no, it was impossible to have guessed this was where it would lead. He rubbed his hands over his face. The entire situation was beyond belief, and yet, as Sansa explained it, he could see the method to the madness. There was a grim sort of poetry to it. "Did you show Daenerys?"

"She has read the letters," Jon said, hesitantly. "Grey Worm brought them to her."

"And?"

"She sent him back with a message claiming Sansa and Bran were traitors and that she would go to Winterfell to kill them both."

Daenerys was even farther gone than he had thought. "She can't," Tyrion said, stunned. "You saw what happened on the dais. She'll never be able to win. She'll die trying, and how many more with her? You need to speak to her. She has always valued you and your advice. Convince her to change her mind."

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know," Tyrion admitted. "But she loves you. And I think that you also love her. Which means you're the only one who even possibly has a chance."

Jon looked at him, for a moment seeming almost about to refuse again. But then he nodded grimly and squared his shoulders, fetching the guard to open the lock again. And with the clang of metal behind him, he strode out the door.


End file.
